Charles Taylor’s authenticity as dialectic and plural freedom

Abstract:

In “Sources of the Self ” (1989), C. Taylor explains the human identity as something that we cannot construct in a solipsistic way. In “The Malaise of Modernity” (1991), he describes the authenticity as a freedom that we cannot reduce to self-determined freedom. We should take account of the “horizons of meaning” and of its “dialogic” component. F. Botturi, in “L’ontologia dialettica della Libertà” (2003), makes a theoretical exercise and tries to articulate dialectically the different dimensions of the freedom: “autodeterminazione”, “autorealizzazione” and “relazione”. In this article, we want to cooperate in the theoretical articulation of the “authenticity” understood as “dialectic” and “plural freedom”. We also want to understand what was Taylor talking about when he made a call for the “lotta continua”, in the chapter VII of The “Malaise of Modernity”.

Key words:

authenticity, ontology, freedom, posmodernity.